John Burnside

Areas of Interest

Biography

A talented and highly distinguished poet and novelist, John Burnside is one of the most prolific and extraordinary writers of his generation. Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, he now lives in Fife.

Despite a challenging and difficult childhood, John Burnside made his way successfully through school and into higher education. As a springboard to his ultimate writing career, he obtained a BA (Hons) in English and European Thought and Literature which he studied at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, a forerunner institution of Anglia Ruskin University.

After graduating, he hid his incredible talent as a writer by working in the technology sector as a software engineer. However, in his free time, his mind would always stray to writing and Burnside began to compose several of his first well known poems.

In 1995, he became a freelance writer after leaving his job in computer systems, and since then has been Writer in Residence at both the University of Dundee and the British Library, and is currently the Professor in Creative Writing at St Andrews University.

He has written many award-winning pieces. His first collection of poetry The Hoop published in 1988, won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and his collection Feast Days became the winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1992. The Asylum Dance scooped the Whitbread Poetry Award; A Lie About My Father won The Saltire Book of the Year Award. His latest collections of poetry are Gift Songs and The Hunt in the Forest.

His popular prose works including Burning Elvis, a collection of short stories, The Locust Room, a novel set in Cambridge, and Living Nowhere, a story of friendship and loss.

Citation

"Vice Chancellor, it is my pleasure to read the citation for John Burnside for the award of Honorary Doctor of Letters.

A talented and highly distinguished poet and novelist, John Burnside is one of the most prolific and extraordinary writers of his generation.

Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, he now lives in Fife.

Despite a challenging and difficult childhood, John Burnside made his way successfully through school and into higher education. As a springboard to his ultimate writing career, he obtained a BA (Hons) in English and European Thought and Literature which he studied at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, a forerunner institution of Anglia Ruskin University.

After graduating, he hid his incredible talent as a writer by working in the technology sector as a software engineer. However, in his free time, his mind would always stray to writing and Burnside began to compose several of his first well known poems.

In 1995, he became a freelance writer after leaving his job in computer systems, and since then has been Writer in Residence at both the University of Dundee and the British Library, and is currently the Professor in Creative Writing at St Andrews University.

John Burnside is widely regarded by readers, critics and his fellow-writers as one of the most outstandingly gifted poets and prose writers, in the UK.

He has written many award-winning pieces. His first collection of poetry The Hoop published in 1988, won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, and his collection Feast Days became the winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1992. The Asylum Dance scooped the Whitbread Poetry Award; A Lie About My Father won The Saltire Book of the Year Award; and the French translation of this book Un Mensonge Sur Mon Pere secured the Prix Zepter in France. His latest collections of poetry are Gift Songs and The Hunt in the Forest.

To add to his enormous collection of award winning poetry, John Burnside has written many popular prose works including Burning Elvis, a collection of short stories, The Locust Room, a novel set in Cambridge, and Living Nowhere, a story of friendship and loss.

Burnside writes from his own personal experience of life, a life he has lived to the full. He writes to please himself not others, even admitting to wishing he could sometimes write 'nicer books with nicer characters'.

John Burnside's memoir, A Lie About My Father details his non-relationship with his drunken, sometimes violent parent. It was published in 2006, and a sequel, Waking Up in Toytown followed in 2010.

It is clear to see that John Burnside is a writer with extraordinary talent. With his vast array of awards and prizes, he is an inspiration to aspiring poets and novelists everywhere. Through his current work with university students, he is helping to perpetuate the power and majesty of the written word for future generations to enjoy.

It is for his immense contribution to writing that we recognise him today.

Vice Chancellor, it is my pleasure to present John Burnside for the award of Doctor of Letters , honoris causa."

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